Monday, September 12, 2011

Measuring with Paper Clips

WHOA! I just looked back in my archives and realized that my son hasn't practiced measuring since July. Shame on me! And after heeding the reading summer camp teacher's advice and making the nuts and bolts game, I wanted another fun way to exercise my son's fine motor skills too. This activity combines both fine motor and measuring.


All you need are paper clips ... lots and lots of paper clips of the same size. Did I mention you need paper clips? I think you get the point.


I gave my son a worksheet I'd cooked up to get him started. While I don't want to overwhelm my son with worksheets, I do like that they sneak in extra reading practice and help me gauge how well he does following directions. (Download the worksheet I made here.)

The purpose of this activity is simple - to string paper clips to measure various items, such as:
the worksheet,

the chair he was sitting in,

and his pencil.

After measuring these (plus his foot and a book) he needed to review the number of paper clips each required and put them in order from greatest to least.


Stringing paper clips was a bit of a struggle for my son at first but, with some serious concentration and a whole heap of determination, he caught on.


We'll be doing this activity again, I'm sure!

6 comments:

  1. What a fun idea! I really enjoy your blog and all the creative things you come up with! Just wish there were more hours in a day so I could do more of them!

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  2. Thanks, Shoregirl and Marcia, for the compliments. I'm SO glad you're both following and like what you see here!

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  3. A few days ago I did this with my children. It was so fun! At first my son didn't think he wanted to do it. I guess it looked like too much work (he's 5). But after I walked him through the first one he loved it and did the rest by himself. It was awesome. Thanks for sharing!

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  4. I'm so glad your son caught on to this project and enjoyed it, snbjork! Stop by tomorrow (Monday, 9/19) for another fun and somewhat similar math activity!

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  5. great idea! Can't wait to try this.

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